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them in the morning, was familiar to the Psalmist, and to those who sang his melodies. When Ezekiel, in his vision, saw the dry bones starting up into an army of living men, it was no strange figure, but only what his faith foresaw at that "end of the days," when, as was told to his contemporary, Daniel, many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt." In such a faith, that mother, whose story is found in the records of the Maccabees, assured her seven sons while they were dying in torments, that "doubtless the Creator of the world would of His own mercy give them breath and life again." It was the common faith of all the Jews, except the Sadducees, who denied all spiritual existence. Some readily believed that John the Baptist was risen from the dead; others, that one of the prophets had returned. In their assembly, therefore, St. Paul appealed confidently to the hope of the resurrection of the dead, as that which he held with his countrymen, and with their fathers.

To a people thus taught, our Saviour said that He would raise up every one that should believe on Him; every one that should eat His flesh and drink His blood. "I am the resurrection and the life," He said to Martha, when she had professed her belief that her brother should "rise again in the resurrection at the last day.” In reply to the Sadducees, He declared that the resur、rection of the dead was implied even in the promises to the patriarchs. He intimated it in the assertion that God is able to destroy both soul and body in hell." To His disciples He gave the assurance, in every form, that the life which He was to enter at His resurrection should be theirs; that He would prepare a place for

them, and would come again, and receive them to Himself; that where He would be they should be also; that they should share His glory, His throne, His marriagesupper. Every such promise was a promise of the resurrection unto life.

The apostles preached at once that Christ should be the Judge of the quick and dead; a distinction which could not but import a return of the dead to stand with the living at His judgment-seat. They preached "Jesus and the resurrection," the resurrection of the dead." "Of the hope and resurrection of the dead," cried Paul, "I am called in question." "I have hope towards God," he said to Felix, "which they themselves also allow, that there shall be resurrection of the dead, both of the just and unjust." He had taught, from the prophets, not only that Christ should rise, but that He "should be the first that should rise." The first must be followed by others; and they are the whole multitude of mankind.

What the apostles preached, they wrote with greater distinctness of detail. They constantly spoke of their own attitude as one of waiting for the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ with all His saints. If we believe," they said, "that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him." "If there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen." "Christ is risen from the dead, and become the first-fruits of them that slept." "As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive." "This corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality." "He which raised up the Lord Jesus shall raise up us also by Je"When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory." Among

sus."

the foundations of apostolic doctrine, are named those of the "resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment." They condemned, as a corrupting canker, the pretence that the resurrection is past already."

"I saw the dead, small and great," says St. John, "stand before God:" "the sea gave up the dead which were in it, and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them."

So from Enoch, who prophesied, "the Lord cometh, with ten thousand of His saints," to him who died but yesterday in the faith of Christ, the grave has never seemed the last resting-place of the just. They repose in hope they are buried in sure and certain hope; a hope which is built simply and solely on the revelation of God. All things around might speak only of decay and perpetual dissolution. These very bodies are reduced to their first elements, to fragments, to dust, to gases, to imperceptible principles; and are mingled with the vast system of corporeal nature; with earth, air, water, with winds and woods and the organization of reptiles, birds, and insects. Faith only, the faith of the Gospel, can assure us of any other life from the grave; and simply and only because we believe in Jesus and His resurrection, we believe that all these dead shall rise.

POLLOK.

"BUT some man will say, How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come?" The answer is given by an apostle; but it is preceded by a rebuke of the folly of the questioner, and it is drawn from the observation of the course of nature. "Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die; and that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be, but bare grain, it may chance of wheat, or of some other grain; but God giveth it a body as it hath pleased Him, and to every seed its own body." The divine oracle seems to bid us look out upon the face of the universe and see the mysteries there, and doubt no longer. There is a reference to natural reason and to natural illustrations; and therefore these are to assist us, even while the word affords the only decision.

The comparison of the seed intimates a diversity of frame, an identity of existence, and a permanence of vitality. Thou sowest not that body that shall be:" the seed and the plant have a widely different aspect.

But the seed is nevertheless the same thing with the plant; and the whole plant is virtually enveloped in the seed from which it is to be developed. The very life itself is something permanent; for, although the seed substantially dies, although its whole body of lobes becomes dead earth, yet the germ which they enclose does not perish, but is quickened, and receives its first vegetative nourishment from this very earth. In the same manner, the human body is deposited in the ground, and all its visible frame is dissolved. But it is impossible to say that there remains not somewhere, amidst the elements to which it is reduced, a germ, however imperceptible, from which the immortal body may yet develop itself in an instant. Too little is known of that wondrous principle, whatever it be, which remains through life, and gives to the body the same peculiar, individual form, aspect, and identity, distinguishing it from all others, though every perceptible particle be repeatedly changed and removed. We can only say that, whether there be such a germ or not in the physical nature of corporeal man, such a germ there is in the more general system which embraces all the divine arrangement for his immortality; and the more exact analogy between this process and that of the revival of the seed is suggested by the very language of the Scriptures.

St. Paul proceeds to say that, as there are such varieties of bodies here in the flesh, bodies of fishes, beasts, and birds; and such varieties in the larger universe, bodies celestial and terrestrial; so the body of this life and that of the resurrection are various.

There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body." One belongs to this present state, and is adapted to its animal and physical necessities; the